360 Degrees Longitude (10 page)

It was a long way down, but we took it one step at a time. About two hours later we arrived at the edge of town. “Now what do we do?” I was asking this question of myself more than of anyone else.

“No idea. I guess we go to Tourist Information,” September replied.

Just then a woman walked up to us. It was easy to tell we were in a bind, since I was carrying an eleven-year-old girl around, talking frantically, and looking bewildered. She asked in English, “Can I help you?”

The Swiss speak four languages in their country, and English isn't one of them. Many in the tourist industry speak English, but it is unusual for someone from the general population. We were grateful once again for the help of a stranger.

After a brief review of the facts, our new friend explained, “There is always a local doctor on call for emergencies.” She hailed us one of the infernal golf-cart cabs that we had grown to loathe and asked the driver to take us to Dr. Julen.

Dr. Julen immediately recognized us. “You are the tandem family,” he said in perfect English. “I saw you a few days ago in the park. You were eating lunch, I think.”

I remembered him from the park as well. He was eating what looked like a burrito. Being burrito deprived can be a dangerous thing for a California boy, especially when fed a steady stream of plain ham sandwiches. I had wanted to mug him and steal the burrito, but now I was grateful that I had suppressed the urge.

By this time Katrina had grudgingly given up some other information. Her wrist hurt as well, and she couldn't move it.

“Her leg does not appear to be broken,” Dr. Julen said, “as there is no swelling, but to be sure, we should x-ray both her wrist and her leg.”

Doctor Julen disappeared with Katrina, and after what seemed like an eternity, he came back into the waiting area and announced, “It is broken.”

September and I looked at each other for several seconds, the silence thundering in our ears. After a decade of anticipation, our once-in-a-lifetime journey was doing a serious Ctrl-Alt-Delete maneuver.

Jordan walked into the x-ray room and hopped up onto the examining table next to his sister. Katrina's face was unreadable. Dr. Julen held up the X-ray for us to see. Katrina turned her head from the X-ray as if denial would make it all go away. Katrina's leg was broken below the knee, and not just broken, but to my eyes, her tibia looked shattered.
There was, however, no sign of a break in her wrist; it was only sprained.

“With this kind of break, it is very important to immobilize the leg at the knee,” explained Dr. Julen.

“But doctor,” I said, “the break is
below
the knee.”

He merely repeated what he had just said, and then as if he was reading my mind, “No cycling until her cast is removed. No swimming or getting the cast wet, either.”

I stood there with my mouth moving, but no sound coming out, like a fish out of water gasping for breath. September came to my rescue. “And how long will that be?” she asked.

“At least six weeks. For a break this bad, possibly eight.” The good doctor was kind as he spoke these words, but he didn't sugarcoat his diagnosis.

Later, after Katrina's cast was in place, a nurse brought a set of crutches. Katrina tried them, but it was impossible for her to use them with her wrist in its current condition.

Dr. Julen asked, “When do you go home? I would like to see Katrina in 24 hours, and she needs to have a follow-up visit in seven days.” Of course we had planned on leaving Zermatt that very day. After some explanation about our situation, we got Dr. Julen to consent to a visit in twenty-four hours and again in four days.

Walking out of the office, I looked down the street and noted the only car I ever saw in Zermatt—a rugged red four-wheel drive with a red cross on it and EMERGENCY RESCUE written in German, French, and Italian on the door.

• • •

It was late afternoon when we returned to our campground; our tandems were where we had left them, all packed and ready to go. The spot of grass where our tent had been that morning was still flattened. I looked around feeling helpless. Jordan broke the silence. “I'm hungry.”

It had been a long time since breakfast and reality was just now starting to come crashing down. September and I wanted to sit down and feel sorry for ourselves, but there was nowhere to sit. Katrina could not stand for long and as she couldn't sit cross-legged with her cast, she just lay down in the grass for want of a proper chair.

The simple task of going to get some dinner was on the verge of overwhelming us. It was then I noted September looking at Katrina lying in the grass, crutches by her side and a cast up to her thigh. Katrina had been stoic all day—she hadn't once complained about pain and had not shed a single tear. Reality had just hit hard and she was now lying in the grass, her little body uncontrollably wracked with sobs; not from physical pain, but from the heartbreak over the plans that would not be fulfilled.

September turned her gaze from Katrina to me and said, “Is this the best we can do for our child? We drag her halfway around the world to make her lie in the grass, homeless, with a broken leg?”

Well, we didn't actually
drag
her. Last I checked Katrina was pretty enthusiastic about the whole World-the-Round Trip thing, but this was hardly the time to argue the finer point.

I set our tent back up and carried Katrina inside. Actually, it is impossible to
carry
a person through a three-foot-high doorway. I sort of pulled her in and thought, “Okay, now I
am
dragging my child.” An upgrade in our accommodations was a top priority, but it would have to wait.

In my professional life I had spent my career dealing with crises in one way or another. I had spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours writing procedures for various spacecraft-related contingencies. The previous several years I had been on call twenty-four hours a day as part of an “On-Orbit Help Desk” and had dealt with all kinds of emergencies. I was used to bad things happening, but this was a lot more personal. My mind raced with how to cope with our immediate needs as well as the longer-range problems that we now faced.

As with every contingency I had ever worked through in my professional life, there were a lot more questions than answers at this early stage of our recovery. We simply prioritized issues into what had to be done and ignored everything else for the time being. In this situation, that meant Jordan and I walked into town and picked up something to eat and brought it back. We didn't get ham sandwiches.

• • •

Morning dawned with a beautiful blue sky and sunshine. During the night September realized we had another priority besides an upgrade in accommodations—a wheelchair.

Where the heck do you get a wheelchair in a small resort town? I left September and the kids at the campground and began my quest. Zermatt doesn't have a hospital. After a lot of asking around town and pantomiming a wheelchair I found one at a nursing home. The receptionist scribbled my name on a yellow Post-it note and smiled as I wheeled the chair out the door.

We spent the remainder of the day pushing Katrina in her wheelchair, going about town looking at apartments. We quickly learned what every disabled person knows.

“There isn't a single place on our list we can access with a wheelchair,” September exclaimed after several hours of searching.

Zermatt is a hilly town with lots and lots of stairs and steep paths. Even the town's youth hostel was unreachable because of the long stairways that had to be negotiated to reach the grounds.

We were still without a better place to stay than the local campground when we returned to Dr. Julen that afternoon for Katrina's follow-up appointment. We explained our predicament to Dr. Julen's receptionist, who happened to also be Mrs. Dr. Julen. “The suite above the office is available for a few days. It even has elevator access!” Dr. Julen not only became Katrina's caretaker, he became our landlord. We negotiated a price, something on the order of first-class floor space in Tokyo's Ginza district, but we had a home.

We spent the rest of the evening luxuriating in indoor plumbing, cooking facilities, and actual furniture. Over the next few days as we waited for Katrina's follow-up appointment with Dr. Julen, e-mails started to pour in from friends offering us free accommodation from Stockholm to London during Katrina's convalescence. We demurred, preferring to take things one day at a time.

Along with everyone else on the planet, we had been counting down the number of days to the new Harry Potter book. The day arrived as we were contemplating how a broken leg was going to impact us in the coming weeks.

 

John's Journal, July 17

… we
then spent the day pushing Katrina around town in her wheelchair, looking for a place to read a chapter. After Katrina and Jordan had gone to bed, I tore the apartment apart looking for the book, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Only the next morning did I find that Katrina was hiding it under her pillow. She and Jordan had been co-conspirators, having laid out their diabolical plan months in advance to keep me from reading ahead
.

We simply could not afford to live indoors in Zermatt; it became time for us to move on. Dr. Julen wrote up a letter in both German and English explaining Katrina's diagnosis and advised us, “She should have her leg x-rayed again in about four weeks. It is possible that she could get a knee-length cast at that time. Don't expect her to be ready to have the cast completely off until at least six weeks from now. Possibly eight. After that, it will be at least two weeks before she can walk without crutches. Good luck.”

Before we had arrived in Zermatt we'd hit our stride and gotten into a rhythm of homework-cycle-sleep-repeat, and for the first time since we left London, cycling to Istanbul had seemed within our grasp. For years I had been anticipating the thrilling descent from Zermatt to Visp on my bicycle. We had also been talking up the hike to “our” apple tree. This was all impossible now.

July 21–August 1
Czech Re/files/19/83/30/f198330/public/Poland

C
hildren do not have an adult's apprehension about landing in a new city, late at night, hungry, not knowing the local language, not having any local currency, nor knowing where to stay. To them, it's all part of a grand adventure.

The broken leg changed everything. A week after Katrina's fall we found ourselves standing on the train platform in Cesky Krumlov, late at night, hungry, not knowing the local language, not having any local currency, nor knowing where to stay. Traveling by bicycle brought changes in our surroundings slowly. Arriving in the Czech Republic by train, our entire environment had changed in the course of a few hours.